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“If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?”
England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen before Jane dies giving birth to the male heir he most craves.
Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to the breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?
With The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion, and courage.
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Fiction, historical, England, fiction, Historical fiction, fiction, history, Courts and courtiers, literary fiction, nyt:combined-print-and-e-book-fiction=2020-03-29, New York Times bestseller, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, historical, general, FICTION / Historical / General, FICTION / Literary, Court and courtiersPeople
Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, George Boleyn, Henry Norris, Francis Weston, Mark Smeaton, Gregory Cromwell, Mercy Prior, Rafe Sadler, Richard Cromwell, Thomas Avery, Thurston, Dick Purser, Jenneke, Christophe, Mathew, Bastings, Edward, Henry Fitzroy, Mary, Elizabeth, Anna, Katherine Howard, Margaret Douglas, William Butts, Walter Cromer, John Chambers, Hans Holbein, Sexton, Edward Seymour, Margery Seymour, Thomas Seymour, Elizabeth Seymour, Thomas Wriothesley, Stephen Gardiner, Richard Riche, Thomas Audley, Thomas Cranmer, Robert Barnes, Hugh Latimer, Richard Sampson, Cuthbert Tunstall, John Stokesley, Edmund Bonner, John Lambert, Thomas Howard, Henry Howard, Mary Howard, Charles Brandon, Thomas Wyatt, Henry Wyatt, Bess Darrell, William Fitzwilliam, Nicholas Carew, Eliza Carew, Francis Bryan, Thomas Culpeper, Philip Hoby, Jane Rochford, Thomas Boleyn, Mary Shelton, Mary Mounteagle, Nan Zouche, Katherine Parr, Henry Bouchier, John Shelton, Anne Shelton, Lady Bryan, Elizabeth Zouche, Dorothea Wolsey, Henry Courtenay, Gertrude Courtenay, Margaret Pole, Henry Lord Montague, Reginald Pole, Geoffrey Pole, Constance Pole, Eustache Chapuys, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Jean de Dinteville, Louis de Perreau, Antoine de Castelnau, Charles de Marillac, Hochsteden, Olisleger, Harst, Lord Lisle, Honor Lisle, Anne Bassett, John Husee, William Kingston, Walsingham, Martin, Humphrey Monmouth, Robert Packington, Stephen Vaughan, Margaret Vernon, John BalePlaces
Great Britain, Putney, Tower Hill, London, Shaftesbury, Calais, Tower of LondonTimes
1536-1540Showing 5 featured editions. View all 26 editions?
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The Mirror & the Light
2020, 4th Estate
Hardcover
in English
- printing (1)
0008366705 9780008366704
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2
The Mirror & the Light
2020, 4th Estate
hardcover
in English
- Exclusive Independent Bookshop Edition; printing (1)
0008390606 9780008390600
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The Mirror & the Light
2020, Henry Holt and Company
Hardcover
in English
- First U.S. Edition (1)
0805096604 9780805096606
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The Mirror & the Light
2020, HarperCollins Publishers
Hardcover
in English
- 1st Canadian edition (1)
1443461083 9781443461085
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5
The Mirror and the Light
2020, Henry Holt and Company
Hardcover
in English
- 1st U.S. edition
0805096604 9780805096606
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The Mirror & The Light is a historical novel by English writer Hilary Mantel. Following Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012), it is the final instalment in her trilogy charting the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, minister in the court of King Henry VIII, covering the last four years of his life, from 1536 until his death by execution in 1540.
Mantel's twelfth novel, her first in almost eight years, The Mirror & The Light was published in March 2020 to widespread critical acclaim, and enjoyed brisk sales. In December 2020, Emily Temple of Literary Hub reported that the novel had made 13 lists of the best books of 2020. It won 2021 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction.
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